1. Technical Field
The invention relates to optimizing service intervals and synchronizing service of routine service items on vehicles.
2. Description of the Problem
Truck fleet operation is highly competitive and fleet operators are highly conscious of the need to balance preventive maintenance costs, repair costs, fleet operational availability and vehicle replacement costs. While cost effective fleet management demands preventive maintenance, rigid adherence to service schedules set in service manuals for each of long list of vehicle systems requiring recurring service can be inefficient. Optimum service intervals, and the selection of components/fluids for service or change, may vary depending upon the character of the use to which the vehicle is put. Complicating the determination of a service interval is that the best operating variable available for scheduling a particular item for service may not be distance traveled. For example, oil changes for a vehicle equipped with in an internal combustion engine are ideally based on an objective determination of the condition of the oil. Making a direct determination of oil condition is currently difficult but better proxies for oil condition than miles traveled are obtainable. These may be total hours of operation or fuel consumed since the last oil change.
Many contemporary vehicles are equipped with body computers, local controllers and controller area networks to implement many aspects of vehicle control. Position determining systems and telematic linkages to central data base management systems ease centralized dispatching and service scheduling. In vehicles designed, built and sold by International Truck and Engine Corporation, an Electrical System Controller (“ESC”) carries out the functions of the body computer. Local controllers pass data to each other and to the ESC. A large amount and variety of vehicle operational data is thus available for optimizing vehicle service intervals.
The availability of data processing capability on board vehicles to track vehicle condition and distance traveled, the ability to track a vehicle's position and service history and the ability to coordinate such tracking over a fleet has suggested to others the implementation of service regimens utilizing data relating to vehicle condition. Numerous references in art stipulate to this. However, the need for a simple to implement, readily understood algorithm, that is readily scalable to a more sophisticated regimen remains a need.